Ngorongoro Crater

The Ngorongoro Crater is from a dormant volcano. This water here is a central source for all of these animals.

The lions were right on the road! A male and female sat right on the edge of the road and just took in the sights of all of us tourists. It was too close for comfort for me actually. Our guide, Joel had a habit of pulling right in front of the other jeeps so we had a front row view. All of us would turn around the tourists in the jeep behind us and apologize, shrug our shoulders like "sorry, it's not us." We wanted everyone to be able to see. Anyway, I didn't want to be that close to the lions and didn't stick my head out of the roof for a bit, if you have seen the movie, Safari, you would understand. Our jeep was boxed in and our roof was open, if they chose to make us their lunch, we wouldn't be much of a fight. I wanted to admire from afar. But it all worked out.

We also got to see a cheetah!! Shauna was super excited!! It was all alone, off in the distance laying in the dry grass. You could see it well w/ the binoculars. The cheetah wouldn't get up and run around and kill something, we wanted some action so we decided to talk back to it. Insult the cheetah, tell really bad momma cheetah jokes, try to get it into action. To no avail.....

One thing you don't want to see on the side of the road is a broken down jeep. We tourists aren't too crazy about the idea of being broken down in lion country. Also, if you have to go "pee-pee time" you don't stray from the jeep, you squat right behind the jeep and the boys keep watch. I wasn't super crazy about this idea and Missy and Shauna didn't blink an eye, butt oh well, don't show the lions your tushy and be ready to run w/ your pants around your ankles...

The jeep repair only took a few minutes thankfully.

At one point, we witnessed a zebra fight. These two male zebras, would basically wrestle with their necks and kick up a good dust storm. At the same time, there was a small herd of zebra that were chasing an impala. But is was a game. The impala would run around and through the herd of zebra and then stop. The zebra would speed up and slow down and pick up the chase once again. It was amazing to watch and so funny...then in the rear of the herd, the two males would stop and fight, then join the chase. The zebra don't neigh like horse, nor do they ee-aw like a donkey. They have a high-pitched sound that was very distinct as well as different than any other animal I have heard.

The hippo pool STUNK!! Oh my gosh, our eyes were watering. We also picked up some flies from in the jeep from the pool, they probably wanted to leave the stench as well. The hippos yawn and swim and poop and crawl around on each other in this water. It was neat to see the babies though....I like the pink bellies.